Winners And Losers From The Final Season Of ‘House Of Cards’

The final season of House of Cards is in the books. There were murders and plotting and scheming and, uh, more murders. Too many murders, some would say. (Like me. I would say that.) Everything happens on this show so much and so, rather than try to break it all down piece by piece, which would be insane and a terrible use of everyone’s time, let’s declare some winners and losers. Yes, let’s do that.

LOSER — Claire Underwood

Claire rose to the presidency and was promptly buried under a pile of Frank’s bullcrap which is, I suppose, not ideal. She also survived two assassination attempts and one attempt on her unborn daughter’s life because, sure, House of Cards will murder a baby if they have to. Or even if they don’t have to. Oh, don’t for one second think this show won’t murder a baby. They didn’t. Not this time. But they definitely would have.

So there was some adversity. Fine. And I will admit that it was periodically thrilling to see her turn the tables on the Shepherds. But Claire is a miserable person, not much better than Frank in the long run, who kills off her enemies in Godfather-style “settle all family business” binges and, as the series closed, was standing over the lifeless body of Doug Stamper in the Oval Office while a preemptive nuclear strike she wanted to order to distract from Stamper-related subterfuge hung in the balance. That’s not great.

Part of me wants to see how she’ll spin all that (I’m guessing self-defense), but please do imagine the breaking news chaos that would erupt in real life if the pregnant president killed her ex-husband’s former chief of staff with a golden letter opener in the Oval Office on the eve of potential nuclear war.

Presidency could be going smoother. That’s my point.

LOSER — Doug Stamper

Netflix

The only good thing Doug Stamper ever did in his miserable smile-free life was grow that gray crazy person beard when he went to go find the body of the marvelous Mrs. Maisel. But then, just as I was coming around, just as I was almost ready to give him a chance, right as I started hoping someone would fly out to the desert and recruit him for some crazy mission and tell him he had to do it because he was “the best,” he cut the beard off with scissors and just melted all the way down.